In certain industries fasteners play a critical role in the assembly of various products, and it is generally desirable to enable such fasteners to be easily inserted in order to facilitate the job of an installer while reducing repetitive process type injuries. However, it is also important that such fasteners hold tightly under varying stresses and loads, while also remaining free from generation of sound due to vibration, among others.
For example, in the automotive industry many pieces of a vehicle are fastened to other pieces of the vehicle, e.g. headliners to a roof of the vehicle, and it is important that these fasteners have high closure strength, while remaining silent. It is also desirable that these fasteners are easy to install to reduce the risk of injury to an installer who may install tens or even hundreds of the fasteners per day.
In addition, numerous configurations exist at installation time, for example, in an automotive application. A single fastener design is often insufficient to meet the various installation configurations, for example, based on a thickness of a substrate to which the fastener is to be installed. Therefore, numerous fastener configurations are generally made available during installation. This means that a manufacturer must be able to provide a number of custom fastener configurations for various applications, which can lead to added cost and manufacturing issues.
US 2015/0158437 discloses a fastening system having at least one holding part which can be fitted to a component and which, on one side, has a flat carrier part, which is provided with adhering or hooking elements projecting on one side and, on the opposite side, has at least one fastener. A sealing device is also provided.